Episode 2
Why does Britain's narrow and elite establishment keep stumbling from crisis to crisis?
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, in an emergency debate in Parliament following this summer's riots, revived a line from his general election campaign. "Britain is broken", he said.
In this two-part series, the award-winning American broadcaster and author Michael Goldfarb challenges the assertion with a question: Is Britain really broken? If it is, then it is broken at the top.
From the City, to the police, to the press, to Parliament, and in cultural institutions including the nation's universities and even the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, a narrow elite, drawn from the least-diverse backgrounds, make the rules, socialise, and define what is and is not permissible among the nation's leaders.
The phone hacking scandal, described as the 'thuggish collusion between the media, the police and politicians', is just the latest example of the British Establishment being caught out.
The credit crunch, the ensuing outrage over executive pay as well as the MPs' expenses scandal, have all shown them to be tone-deaf to popular concerns.
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Broadcasts
- Tue 25 Oct 2011 08:05GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Online
- Tue 25 Oct 2011 12:05GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Online
- Tue 25 Oct 2011 15:05GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Online
- Tue 25 Oct 2011 19:05GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Online
- Wed 26 Oct 2011 01:05GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Online
- Sat 29 Oct 2011 22:05GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Online